


They Say That Lightning Strikes Again

by which_chartreuse



Series: They Only Walk When It's Raining [2]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017), True Blood (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, F/M, Frank Castle was the Punisher, Gen, Holding Hands, Human Frank Castle, I'm Bad At Summaries, I'm Bad At Tagging, I'm Bad At Titles, I'm Just Making Up Tags, Jessica Hamby reminds Frank Castle of someone, Light Angst, NaNoWriMo2020, PWP without Porn, Unresolved Tension, Vampire Jessica Hamby, implied and unnamed missing or dead character(s), outside in severe weather, procrastination, smell of blood, universe fusion, vampire self-identifying as a walking corpse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27626711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/which_chartreuse/pseuds/which_chartreuse
Summary: It's an uncharacteristically slow night at Merlotte's when an inscrutable stranger asks Jessica an absurd question.[Once again, I am terrible at summaries.]
Relationships: Jessica Hamby and Frank Castle
Series: They Only Walk When It's Raining [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020376
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	They Say That Lightning Strikes Again

**Author's Note:**

> I've been struggling with my original project for NaNoWriMo this year, so of course my imagination decided to give me this instead. It couldn't even give me something for the longer fics I've been incubating all summer, no! *Le sigh*  
> Inspired, undoubtedly, by my current re-watch of True Blood and my inability to leave Frank Castle alone for more than a few months at a time. (Also, for those who don't know, Deborah Ann Woll plays both Jessica Hamby in TB and Karen Page in the Netflix Marvel U). Written between midnight and two am and five and ten pm of the same day.  
> Please note: I have taken a lot of liberties with canon and spent very little time editing. Title credit from "Cold Ground" by Rusty Truck.  
> Thank you for reading.

It was an unusually slow night for Merlotte’s. There were almost never nights this slow. Even when mythological beasts or serial killers were on the loose, there was always a crowd at the local bar and grill.

Maybe it was that Bon Temp football had lost their homecoming game. Although that generally meant more business for the bar, not less.

Maybe it was the draw of nearby Shreveport finally luring Sam’s would-be regulars away.

Maybe it was just the crummy weather.

Whatever it was, Jessica was bored. Sam had already sent Arlene home, and most of the kitchen staff. Coby, a newly minted bus-boy, had gone with his mother. That just left Sam behind the bar, and Terry rushing around to pre-close as much as possible to get home to Arlene quicker, and the unlucky boys still on kitchen duty.

Jessica watched a gaggle of teenagers capitalizing on their opportunity to shoot pool unchallenged in the nearly empty restaurant, and averted her gaze and ignored the boy she was pretty sure was this year’s Jason Stackhouse every time he tried to catch her attention. A trucker by the window kept her busy refilling his coffee every five minutes for the duration of his dinner, and then was gone, leaving a grossly generous tip in his wake. Jessica slipped half of it into Arlene’s locker, but it didn’t feel any less dirty even after all this time.

Then there was the grizzled man at the bar. Jessica would have thought ‘werewolf’ if he hadn’t smelled entirely too clean and non-dog-like for it. If Sookie were here, she would have pestered the telepathic waitress to poke around in his brain by now. But it was just Sam and Terry and Jessica, and Sam was about to send Terry home, too.

The man at the bar didn’t seem to bother Sam, but he also didn’t seem to be eating any faster or ordering any more drinks, either. She wasn’t entirely sure, had stopped keeping track, but Jessica thought he’d been nursing the same beer for the last hour.

When the television over the bar switched from sports with a running list of advisories and warnings along the bottom of the screen to full-time weather coverage, the teenagers finally emptied out. Terry mopped around the pool table, loaded up the heavy duty dishwasher so it’d be ready to go, and, with Sam’s blessing, left. Jessica refilled every salt and pepper shaker in the place and was halfway through marrying ketchups when Sam asked the man at the bar if he’d be wanting anything else from the kitchen, his gentle way of alerting the guy that Merlotte’s was likely to close early.

He ordered a basket of fries and switched to coffee.

After the fries came out, the kitchen boys shut down and cleaned up, and then it was just Sam and Jessica. And the man at the bar.

Jessica wiped down every table and booth, wiped all the menus, and then straightened every chair into perfect alignment. She stood at the end of the bar and went through her checks and receipts, and pretended not to catalog details and build hypotheses with every glance at the man now sucking down coffee almost as fast as the trucker had.

Sam gave Jessica the look that said to keep an eye on things, she nodded, and he disappeared into the back office with her receipts. Jessica wiped the stack of trays and refilled the napkin caddies, and ignored the man harder than she’d ignored the high schooler.

Which was why it startled her when he addressed her. It took her mind a moment to come back around when he asked again, “Ma’am?”

“Yes? Sorry. Yes?” She replied.

“Could I get just a bit more, please?” He indicated his coffee cup with a slight tilt of his head, then lifted it in her direction.

“Of course! Sorry.” She winced a little at the repeated apology and the young sound of her own voice.

She could feel his eyes on her as she poured the coffee into his cup. Could feel his appraisal and curiosity, and felt slightly ashamed for wondering so hard about who he was and where he’d come from - and where he’d go to - for so much of the night.

“He your dad or something?” The sound of his voice once again startled Jessica, and she tipped the coffee pot up so she wouldn’t spill as she finally took a good, square look at his face.

His eyes were dark brown within the deep shadows of his face, and his nose looked so many times broken she wondered that he could breathe through it at all. He’d definitely seen his fair share of fights, and more than a mile or two of rough road, but otherwise just looked mildly curious, or maybe a bit confused.

“What?” Jessica didn’t following where his question was going, and her brow knit with more than a bit of her own confusion.

“Or your... boyfriend?” He tilted his head slightly to the left, then forward, indicating the direction Sam had gone.

“What, Sam?!” Jessica felt more scandalized than she had by the trucker’s leering eyes and big tip, and she showed it. “Ew! No!… Gross.” She shuddered.

The man chuckled, a deep, rich sound from low in his chest, and settled his coffee cup on the bar before lifting both hands in front of himself in mock contrition.

“I apologize. I did _not_ mean to offend you.” He chuckled again, and gave Jessica a crooked smile, then shook his head and reached for the coffee. “I should know better than to pry.”

“It’s alright,” Jessica offered with a sigh. “Just… weird.” She eyed him with a renewed frustration that she hadn’t figure him out yet, and after a few deep pulls of coffee, he met her gaze again. She smiled her best waitress smile and considered glamoring him for a half second before he chuckled again.

“I’m sorry.” The way he said it was sincere, but also weighted. Like he still had questions, but now thought better than to ask them.

“Don’t get many aren’t local in here, is all,” Jessica tried to explain. “Everyone knows Sam, so…”

The man nodded again, looked away, and drained the rest of the coffee. He pushed the empty cup toward Jessica with another tilt of his chin. She emptied what was left in the pot into the cup.

“You gonna want more?” she asked.

“Nah, that’s great. Thank you, ma’am.”

Sam returned from the office and relieved Jessica of the empty coffee pot. She went back to her busywork and listened as the man requested his check and thanked Sam for the service. He called a low, rumbly ‘thank you’ in Jessica’s direction, too, and tipped his chin in indication when she turned from the neon signs she was switching off.

There was a twinkle of the same curiosity - or maybe it was mischief? - in the look he gave her, and then he was gone.

“Thank you for waiting it out with me, Jessica,” Sam called from the register.

“You know it’s no problem.” Jessica switched off the ‘open’ sign, turned the rest of the neons off, and locked the front door.

“Sorry ‘bout the weather,” Sam offered as he walked with her to the office to lock up the bank. “If you can wait another few minutes, I’ll drive you back.”

“Ah, that’s nice of you. But I like the storms. Makes me feel a little human again, ya know?” She folded her apron, shrugged into her jacket, and closed up her locker.

“Alright, well… Be careful. Don’t go gettin’ struck by lightning.” Sam met her eyes and held them as he handed over the envelope with her pay. She rolled her eyes back as she took it from him.

“Oh, Sam… I’ll see you tomorrow.” She patted him on the shoulder and headed out the back door.

Jessica inhaled the scents of wet earth and green things deep into her lungs, and caught the gamy smell of some deer nearby, and a few birds, too. There was the taint of the dumpsters and grease, the vague dogness of Sam, and all the markers of human occupation and habitation as well, but the smell of the storm washed most of it into the background.

She could taste electricity in the air. Electricity and…blood.

The man from the bar leaned halfway in and halfway out from under the hood of his van at the edge of the parking lot nearest the road, twisting something with one hand while holding the other, wrapped in a bandana, above his head.

“Car trouble?” She called to him from a safe distance away.

His whole body tensed at the sound of her voice, and he peered around the hood of the van with cautious surprise. But whatever had been the problem must have been fixed, because he dropped the hood and began unwrapping his hand.

“Nothing serious,” he called back.

Jessica could taste blood again, and though she knew better, she kept moving toward him.

“You hurt yourself?” she asked.

“Just a nick,” he answered, now following her progression across the parking lot with unmasked curiosity.

“There’s a first-aid kit inside, if you want-…”

“Got one, thanks.” He thumped the side of the van.

He was still tense, and Jessica could hear the thrum of blood flowing in his veins, but the heartbeat remained even and calm. Without realizing she had done it, she took the injured hand in both of hers and peered down at it in the poor light. His breath hitched, and his heart rate sped up just a little. He probably wouldn’t even have noticed, but Jessica did, and she flinched as she registered the change, coming back to herself. She dropped his hand.

“I’m sorry! That was- I’m sorry!” She took several steps back and searched the man’s face for anger or fear or disgust. But it wasn’t there.

He looked not exactly bewildered, not really surprised. There was the ever-present curiosity, now plain on his face, and the tension in his limbs, though that was easing. And then he smiled the crooked smile again, and laughed a low sound that Jessica could almost have mistaken for the distant thunder, and realization seemed to break across his whole body with the rumble of it through him.

“I think I just figured it out,” he said, and Jessica stood frozen in the dark as the man laughed along with the storm.

“Figured what out?” she asked, feigning ignorance while gauging whether she was far enough from him to escape a silver chain were one to come flying.

“Why the boss would send everyone but the young waitress home if they weren’t either related or dating. Why he’d keep her out late in a storm, not walk her to her car in the dark. I mean, what kinda asshole would do that?”

He watched her as she watched him. It was no use playing dumb anymore, Jessica knew. But she wasn’t going to confirm anything for him, either, so they just stared another minute. Then he shook his head, reached into the van, and began cleaning his cut with the alcohol wipe he’d pulled out.

Jessica watched him work to clean and re-wrap his hand. Tasted the sharp antiseptic replacing the warm tang of blood in the air. Thought somewhere, in the back of her mind, that she could probably take him after all, then shook herself out of the idea when heavier ran began to fall again, with a nearer crackle of lightning.

The man had stopped laughing when he’d begun to dress his injury, and now that Jessica had determined not to drink him, she turned away and resumed her nightly commute. She heard the van door slam behind her, and kept going.

She was listening to the rain and feeling it soak into her clothes. Felt the way it raised her body temperature ever so slightly, before matching her natural cold.

“Can I offer you a lift?” He called after her, but his voice sounded closer than she’d expected.

“I’m alright,” she called back, not bothering to turn and track him visually.

“Can I walk you, then?” he asked. And his voice was deep, and he smelled of coffee and soap and warmth beside her.

“I guess. If you want. You’re gonna get soaked, though.”

He made a sound that could just as easily have been distaste as agreement, but the warmth he brought to the air around her remained.

It was up to him, Jessica supposed, if he wanted to risk a late night walk in a thunderstorm with a girl who could kill him. She supposed caffeine and curiosity were overriding his basic survival instincts, though his overall appearance suggested he would hold his own a bit longer than most if it came to a struggle.

With a deep breath, drawing in the faintest taste of the mostly dry blood on his hand along with all the other little hints and details of the night, she resolved herself to the ignoring game again.

He didn’t make it easy on her, though. And she wasn’t bored anymore, either.

The rain began to fall in earnest, and he turned up the collar of his jacket and pulled a knit cap from his pocket. The movement and the notes of sweat and old blood that accompanied his actions caught Jessica’s attention despite herself. He was scowling into the darkness as he tugged the cap over his head and his prominent ears. Those looked like they’d seen a few fights, too.

“You don’t get cold?” he asked, but stared ahead, into the night.

“Nope,” she replied, without explaining it was difficult to ‘get’ cold when she already was that way.

She heard him hum in acknowledgment and consideration. They continued at a leisurely, human pace for a bit before he spoke again.

“You ever get warm?”

This time Jessica was the one who laughed, and the sound seemed to startle him more than the nearing lightning did. She turned a smile on him, giggling.

“You _are_ figuring it out,” she teased, and he smirked back.

They kept walking, one practically silent, the other as silent as a living man could ever be.

“Why’re you walkin’ with me?” They rounded the turn in the direction of the old Compton House and Jessica’s curiosity got the drop on her before she could stop the words from escaping. “You have to know I don’t need watchin’ out for.”

He was quiet beside her, but she could see him mulling his response in the expression on his face.

“Satisfying my curiosity, I guess,” he said.

“Aren’t you scared?” But she could see and sense with everything she had that he wasn’t.

He pondered his answer longer than she expected, though.

“You remind me of someone,” he finally said. “A little older than you, but… very similar.”

Jessica snorted. “I’m older than I look.”

The rumble of his laughter blended into the rain and thunder.

“I figured.” He shot her another of his crooked, mischievous looks, and if she could have, Jessica would have blushed.

“How old d’you think I am?”

“Rude to speculate.”

“C’mon!” Jessica tilted toward him as they walked and bumped his shoulder with her own. It was a playful gesture, but again it seemed to take him by surprise. “Just guess!”

He drew in a deeper breath, tugged his cap lower, and seemed to steel himself a moment. They walked in step a few paces further before he turned to regard her profile again.

In a flash of lightning, Jessica saw something painful pass across his face and disappear back into his appraising look. He sighed, and addressed his answer to the road ahead of them.

“Older than you look,” he said. “And too young to be…-”

Thunder sounded, chasing after the lightning, but Jessica didn’t think he had finished the sentence. She listened under the relentless fall of the rain, beneath the fading rumble, and picked out the rush of blood through his heart again. It must have been someone special, she decided, for the company of a walking corpse to do to him what she had just inadvertently done.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, just loud enough and just close enough for him to hear.

She hesitated a half second while another flash and crash of lightning and thunder split the air nearby - the closest yet - then closed the space between them, linking her arm through his and clasping his bandaged hand tight.

He stopped moving, and so Jessica stopped. He stared at her face and looked alternately like he wanted to tell her off and like he had more questions. Like he was searching for an answer in her face. But he didn’t say anything, so she didn’t either.

She closed her eyes under his gaze and sank into the rest of her senses. Let the smell of damp forest air and the taste of electricity flood in through her nose and mouth. Let the diminished yet undeniable heat of his hand and arm and side press and seep into the cool of her.

She still didn’t know who he was, or really know why he was out in the storm with her, but that didn’t bother her now.

She listened to his heart regain its steady rhythm, then, with eyes still shut, smiled up into the rain, letting it shower her completely. She felt the vibration build against her side this time, as the rumble of his laughter broke open.

Jessica opened her eyes and met a ridiculous smile. Not a crooked, halfway, mischievous little flash and lift of lips, but a full display of teeth and a look of joy. A smile that brought creases to the edges of his eyes. She returned the smile, squeezed his hand a little tighter, and tugged them back into motion.

They stayed like that, linked to each other at the arm, the rest of the way up the long drive and into the cemetery.

As they passed through the headstones and neared the house, though, they began to drift apart.

They crossed the wide lawn, and drifted further. Their arms loosened, and all that connected them were their hands.

They mounted the steps to the front porch, and the man let go of the vampire’s hand.

He shivered in the porch light, and shook water from his jacket. Pulled the knit cap from his head and ran a hand through wild, wet curls.

“Thank you,” Jessica said. “For walking me home…”

“Frank,” the man said.

“Thank you, Frank.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Jessica.”

“Jessica.” He said her name and gave her the smaller version of the smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes this time.

She didn’t know what should happen next. She hadn’t considered at all that this was where her night would take her. Home, with a strange man dripping on her doormat.

Frank still didn’t look afraid, and he didn’t really look curious anymore, either. If she had to give his expression a name, Jessica would be tempted to call it ‘sad,’ or ‘wistful.’

“Would you like to come in, Frank?” she asked. “I don’t have coffee, but there’s hot water. And towels. You could dry off, warm up…”

Wistful was the right word for that look, Jessica decided. She could practically feel the longing roll off him like she could feel the last of his heat in her fingertips dissipating. The smile was heartbreaking.

“Thank you,” he said, and she would have asked ‘what for?’ except that he was shifting closer at the same time.

His lips pressed, warm and solid, for a moment against her cheek. Then he pulled away again. Frank met her eyes, rich brown searching clear blue, smiled his unhappy smile, and backed away. She followed him as far as the top step, but he turned and never looked back.

Jessica watched him go. Waited until she couldn’t pick him out from the night and the storm with any of the rest of her senses either. Then slumped to the warn planks of the front steps and let the rain try its best to bring life back into her body.

**Author's Note:**

> I dunno. I barely wrote a hundred words a day for the last five days, and then this thing came pouring out of me. Apparently, I can only write about people holding hands while they walk in the rain. Anyway.
> 
> Thank you for reading <3
> 
> Update, 11/19/2020: My brain refuses to cooperate, so there's gonna be at least one more chapter...


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